4 The Summer of the Brownings
In addition to his students’ work, Griffin ’s satchel also contained a long, unfinished story, “The Summer of the Brownings,” its precomputer pages yellowed and curled. A couple years after they were married, it had been his first attempt to implement that provision of the Great Truro Accord by trying to write something other than a screenplay. He’d come across the story when he was cleaning out his filing cabinets at the college in order to make room for the few things of his father’s that he wanted to keep. His father’s last years were spent in a small, cramped, university-owned flat, and most of the furnishings weren’t even his. There were lots of scholarly journals and books, including a pristine copy of Claudia’s dissertation, published by a good university press, that she’d proudly signed. Griffin found his father listed on the acknowledgments page, along with the other members of her doctoral committee. The book’s stiff spine suggested that the book hadn’t been opened, much less read. Of course if his father had written it, as his mother alleged, there would’ve been no need to. In a token gesture of revenge Griffin had given it away with the rest of his father’s library, keeping as mementos only a few of the P. G. Wodehouse and Henry Miller books he remembered him reading on Cape Cod beaches. He’d almost missed, in the recesses of a dark closet, the dozen shoe boxes full of campaign buttons and other political trinkets his father had continued to collect down the years, and he kept these as well. “Scoff all you want,” he remembered him telling his mother when he stopped at flea markets. “You won’t be laughing when we sell the whole collection and use it for a down payment on a house.”
Was it worth anything now? Griffin supposed it might be and made a mental note to inventory the items and have them valued, but then he’d shoved the shoe boxes into the back of the filing cabinet and hadn’t thought about them since. The only real surprises among his father’s effects were a couple VHS tapes of movies Griffin and Tommy had written. He couldn’t remember sending them himself, so had his father bought them? Or had a colleague, noticing the screenplay credit, given them to him as a gift? They had been viewed, but by whom?
“The Summer of the Brownings” had an interesting provenance. The writers had gone on strike that year, as they were forever doing, and he’d used the work stoppage to write it. “You’re shitting me,” Tommy said when Griffin explained what he was doing. Why not write a spec script, he argued, which every other screenwriter would be doing, because then they’d have something they could sell once the strike was over. Be in the driver’s seat for once, instead of having to take the first horseshit assignment they got offered. Griffin told him to go ahead and start something if he wanted, but he knew Tommy wouldn’t. He relied on Griffin for direction and wouldn’t even know where to begin.
The story was about the summer he was-what-twelve? He and his parents had gone to the Cape, as usual. He couldn’t remember exactly where, only that it was pretty remote and they’d stayed only two weeks, which meant they weren’t flush. Their tiny, shingled cottage (Wouldn’t Have It As a Gift!) was set back from the highway in a stand of scrub pines along with eight or ten others arranged in a horseshoe around a brown, hard-packed children’s play area. To get to the water you had to cross the macadam road, then walk down a winding dirt road past million-dollar beach homes (Can’t Afford It!), between rolling, grassy dunes for a good half mile. Only one other cottage was occupied, so it must have been early in the season, probably the last half of June, because he recalled it had been warm.
“At least they’re over on the other side,” his father said, indicating the two children playing outside that cottage. His parents never made any secret of the fact that they loathed children, and that the whole compound was organized around a rusty swing set and jungle gym they took as an evil omen indeed. Even before they were finished unpacking the car, Griffin, changing into his bathing suit in the tiny upstairs bedroom under the eaves, heard his mother say, “Good God, here they come.” And sure enough, the whole family from across the way was trooping through the playground, clearly intending to welcome the newcomers. Griffin hurried down to meet them.
They were the Brownings, they said; the mother and father were both teachers from somewhere in western Massachusetts and roughly the same age as Griffin ’s parents. The kids were a boy, Peter, and also a little girl. Mr. Browning wondered if they were thinking about buying the cottage, indicating the FOR SALE sign leaning up against the porch. “God, no!” Griffin ’s father replied with a shudder. While the cottages were identical, the Brownings apparently took no offense, even though they themselves were part owners of the one they occupied, they explained, along with two other couples that taught at their school. The cottages were all individually owned, looked after in the off-season by a local caretaker, but most were rented for at least a month or two in the summer, and there was always a nice mix of people.
“You must be teachers, too,” Mr. Browning said, indicating the institutional decal on the rear window of the Griffins’ car.
“University professors, actually,” his mother said, clearly anxious to set them straight on this score.
Mrs. Browning, a tall, beautiful, olive-skinned woman, touched her husband’s elbow then, saying they were heading to the beach, and since their boys were about the same age, would Griffin like to come?
“Go on,” his parents said in unison.
That was the beginning. By the end of the day he and Peter Browning had become fast friends. Every morning, when his parents were reading the newspaper (his father drove into town early to pick it up, along with fresh pastries, though he kept forgetting he was supposed to get a box of Griffin’s favorite cereal, too) and having breakfast with Al Fresco, they’d hear the Brownings’ screen door creak open on its unoiled hinge and Peter would shout across the playground, “Can you come over?”
“Have fun,” his parents said, by which they meant, Leave us in peace.
Except, wait, that wasn’t true, at least not at the beginning. On their second day, when Griffin was again invited, midmorning, to go to the beach, his mother had said no, that he should stay with them. They’d be going to the beach themselves, right after lunch. So off the Brownings had trudged, a big cooler swinging between the adults, the little girl (why couldn’t he remember her name?) skipping on ahead, Peter shouldering a big mesh laundry bag full of towels and colorful beach toys and looking devastated as he waved goodbye. When Griffin wanted to know why he hadn’t been allowed to go along, his mother explained that people like that always wanted something in return for kindnesses, and she had no intention of playing that game.
Two interminable hours later, Griffin and his parents, not nearly so well provisioned, emerged from among the dunes, and he glimpsed the Brownings a hundred yards down the beach to the left. “Go right, go right, go right,” his father said, nudging him forcefully in the other direction and pretending not to notice the entire family standing up and waving. “They teach junior high,” his mother explained when Griffin asked why they weren’t being more friendly. “Do you know what that means?” He didn’t, but understood he was supposed to. Was it that people who taught, say, kindergarten didn’t associate with people who taught seventh grade, who didn’t socialize with people who taught high school, who didn’t mix with college professors? It had to be something like that, he decided.